


Letters from a Ghost

by Argonautical



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, It turns out good I promise, Letters, Loss, Oneshot, Sadness, Slipstream Incident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 10:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10489380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argonautical/pseuds/Argonautical
Summary: The Slipstream Jet malfunctions. Lena Oxton is lost, presumed dead. Her girlfriend Emily is left behind. But traces of Lena still linger - letters, found in odd places at odd times, out of order, out of time, addressed to Emily. These letters might be the clue to finding Lena again, if only Emily can bring herself to look.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kallinkelly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kallinkelly/gifts).



> Hi all. Argo here. Yes, I've been away, and yes, there will be a new chapter of Tending Towards Chaos out around Thursday. I got on a plane and flew 5,000 miles across the world to go and meet kallinkelly, my girlfriend (who I met from my fics, so this is a fitting gift I guess). It was wonderful. A week in paradise. But I realise I've barely written in so long, and she says she loves my writing, so I decided to write this for her (and share it with you).  
> Thanks for bearing with me. It's been a hard couple of weeks back home without her.  
> I love you, Kait.

_Dear Em,_

_My mum always said that a letter was more personal than a holovid. Said that putting pen to old-fashioned paper was an act of love in itself. I dunno how much I believe her, but I feel like today is the day, if there ever was one._

_Today I’ll be taking the Slipstream on her maiden voyage. I’m brown-trousered with nerves and I’m sorry you’ve had to put up with me faffing and going to pieces over this for months. You’ve been so good to me, Em. So patient. I’d never have gotten this far without you. I’m just like my planes. All ready to zoom off into the sky. You keep me grounded. You’re my anchor._

_I know you’ll be right there in the observation room for the launch. I can imagine your face now. I bet you’ll have tried to brush your hair and dress all nice but it’ll just go wild and you’ll moan about not being warm enough. Haven’t I bought you enough knitwear, woman?_

_Anyway. It’s nearly time to wake up. I don’t like being here in the barracks but they insisted that I stay for vitals observations the night before. Can’t have me wrecking their expensive teleporting jet the first time out because I’ve got the flu, ey? I’ll pod this over to the flat so you can read it later._

_Remember that I love you, Em.  
Yours,_

_Lena_

Emily never noticed the mail pod waiting in the receiver that morning. She was running late. Hair untameable, just as Lena had predicted. Her favourite jacket not quite dried overnight from yesterday’s typical London drizzle. She bolted out the door with a piece of toast and jam hanging from her mouth without a second glance.

The launch did not go as planned.

Emily did not read that letter as Lena had intended.

She read it through tear-filled eyes, at two o’clock in the morning the next day after she had returned from the airfield. She read it in the apartment she shared with a dead woman. Read it with shaking hands and a running nose, her fingers clutched so tight to the crumpled paper that it tore slightly. Emily read it with the echo of her lover in her head, the last she thought she’d ever hear Lena’s voice.

Time passes. That’s what time does. It ticks by. Shocked seconds turn into distraught minutes turn into miserable hours. Hours become listless days, days become wasted weeks, and weeks slowly bleed into grey, heavy months. Emily left that apartment and moved in with her sister in a trendy Canary Wharf tower block that felt appropriately corporate and soulless for her mood. She tried to talk a couple of times, tried to go to groups, therapy. Other ‘military wives and girlfriends’ support circles. But she felt nobody could understand the crushing weight of it. Of Lena being dead and missing. No body, no proof. A cocky grin and a quick wink, and then an empty space.

The worst thing was that Emily still hoped. She hoped somewhere deep and childish down in her heart that Lena was alive. Thrown out of space, maybe. Lost on some deserted island in the South China Sea. But not dead.

It was hard to move on. Emily felt it limbo because she envisioned Lena in limbo. Dead, but maybe not. But surely not alive. Surely not the Lena she had loved and touched with her own two hands. A ghost. Vanished without a trace.

But there were traces.

Emily found one in March on a blustery day. It was the first really wet day of spring, wet enough to warrant an umbrella instead of a raincoat. She grabbed the hideous ladybird-covered umbrella Lena had refused to let ‘die naturally’ when three of its metal spines had snapped and instead fixed with duct tape. As Emily pushed her way outside, she opened the umbrella and a piece of paper fell out into a puddle at her feet.

She bent quickly to pick the sodden paper up and shook it open. It was a letter. A letter written in the untidy scrawl of Lena Oxton.

 

_Dear Em,_

_I don’t know what it is about big events. They make me nervous. You know I’m normally cool as a cucumber with anything. Give me a fighter jet, boom, I’m doing loop-de-loops before they’ve finished the safety briefing. But something about you makes me so nervy._

_I actually wrote a letter before this and I chucked it away. This one, I’m probably going to be too chicken to give to you in person. I’ll probably hide it somewhere for you to ‘find’ later on and then we’ll laugh about it and I won’t have to hand it over like a blushing schoolgirl._

_So, yeh, big events. Tomorrow we’re meeting your parents. And before you make a pouty face and say, “But Lena, you’ve already met my parents!” Holovid does not count. I bet your dad is way scarier in person. He’s so Scottish. Big and beardy and ginger, like you (minus the big, and the beardy. Hopefully?). He seemed nice but what if he doesn’t like me? Thinks I’m some dashing cad who’s going to leave you to rot while I zoom off with the Air Force? And your mum, you said she was a headmistress at a boarding school. What if she wants to beat me with a switch or something? What if I accidentally swear in front of them? What if they think I’m common because I’m a London gal? What if they think I’m not good enough for a girl as incredible as you?_

_I’m bricking it, as you can tell. At least by the time you read this I’ll have met them and it’ll be over with. Or your dad will have thrown me into the river Thames and I will have drowned. Either way, the problem will have been addressed._

_Anyway. Whatever happens, I know you’ll hold my hand and squeeze it just a bit to show me you’re with me, like you always do. How you’ll catch my eye and incline your head to subtly ask if I’m doing okay. God, Em, if I didn’t have you, I’d be going to pieces. Whatever your parents think tomorrow, remember that I love you._

_Yours,_

_Lena_

The tears that had dried over Christmas came pouring back out like the Spring storm. Emily collapsed onto her hands and knees in the doorway as the letter began to droop in her hands from the water. The umbrella clattered to the floor and she sat and wept for hours before her sister dragged her inside and chastised her.

“You have to move on, Em. She’s gone. I can’t stand to see you so miserable. Please, Em. You’re not the same. You’re so sad. It’s like the fire inside you went out.”

But Emily kept the damp letter. She kept it in the same box as the ripped letter. She kept it and did not move on. She mourned and wept. But she remembered.

The call came at two in the morning, a booming voice on the other end. Winston. She remembered the name. A scientist who Lena had worked with before. Something to do with Overwatch. Emily didn’t know everything about the organisation, only that they did good in the world and had their fingers in a lot of pies. Lena had met the scientist Winston on a mission in Mozambique. By the sounds of things, Overwatch and the Royal Air Force had clashed over how to manage the conflict, but eventually decided to work together.

“Begrudgingly.” As Lena had asserted. But she’d rather taken to one of the Overwatch scientists. Spoke of him occasionally. By the sound of his voice, he was a big man.

“I remember you.” Emily said sleepily as Winston inquired after her health. “What’re you calling so late for?”

“Do you have access to Lena’s apartment?”

“I – I do.”

“I need you to go check something. It’s urgent. If you give me the address I will meet you there. I’m in London.”

And so she did, making the journey to King’s Row on the night bus with a fuzzy head. Her hands shook. But there was a spark of hope. A tiny spark. Enough.

Emily was fumbling with her keys at the door when a massive hulking figure squeezed itself into the corridor. She cried out and flicked the corridor lights on.

“I see Lena didn’t tell you I was a gorilla.” Said the giant talking gorilla in a trench coat.

“No. She forgot to mention it, I suppose.”

“Winston.” He shook her hand. His palms were warm. Comforting. His eyes were deep and yellow, aged, but the look of caring on his face answered any and all questions about his curious existence. Emily didn’t need to know. All she wanted was to help.

“What do you need in here?” She let him in. The smell of the place hit her. Perfectly preserved. The smell of her and Lena, intertwined, sunk into the furniture and the very brickwork of the place. It was immaculately clean, everything covered in a fine layer of dust. She hadn’t been back since that night.

“I’m looking for a briefing log from the Slipstream. The Air Force won’t let me see it, say it’s confidential, but I think I have a theory. I need to see it. Knowing Lena, she left it around somewhere.”

Well, he did know Lena all right. She was scatter-brained like that. Always zipping from one thing to the next, leaving a trail of things to tidy up. Emily never usually minded. It was worth having Lena in her life.

She suspected anything Lena had been given to read would be in her bedside table in the master bedroom, probably with a view to be read in the days leading up to the launch but never actually touched. It was hard, being back in there. The lump in Emily’s throat enlarged and hardened, suffocating her. The bed immaculate on her side, messy on Lena’s, sheet’s pulled out from where they were meant to be tucked in. On Lena’s bedside table was a glass of water, a stack of comics, and a phone charger.

Emily tried the top drawer. Locked. She sighed at her past self.

“It’s got her gun inside. I said I wasn’t going to sleep in a room with a gun unless it was locked up. She had the key on a necklace. I’m sorry.”

“May I?” Winston enquired.

“Go ahead.” She said, thinking he was going to whip out a lock pick. Instead, he grabbed the knob and wrenched the drawer off its rollers with a loud crack.

It was a case, he said in later years, of begging forgiveness rather than asking permission.

Winston upturned the drawer and emptied the contents onto the bed. A packet of mints, Lena’s pistol, a tablet reader and a piece of paper. Winston grabbed the tablet and turned in on, pushing his square glasses up his nose and snorting in excitement.

Emily picked up the paper.

 

_Dear Em,_

_If you’ve opened this drawer, it probably means you had to get my gun and I’m not there. Don’t be scared. It’s loaded, but the safety is on. You just need to cock it by pulling the handle on the top back, and it’s good to go when the safety switch is pushed to ‘fire’ on the right hand side near the trigger._

_I hope to God you never have to use it. That you never feel you have to. I know you’re scared of guns and what they can do. Sometimes I wonder why you date me when I’m in the military and guns are sort of our thing. I can’t fathom you sometimes, but whenever I get lost wondering about things like these, I come to the same conclusion. Whyever it is that you love me, I’m so glad that you do. You’re amazing, Em. And if you have to pull this trigger – if somebody threatens your life – you can be sure that I will not rest until that motherfucker – pardon my French – pays for it. I’m so protective of you. I’d do anything for you. I hope you know that. When I go out to fight for my country, I’m fighting for you. I want you to be safe. To be happy. I want to create a world where you don’t ever have to open this drawer and use this gun._

_You’re sound asleep as I write this in the dead of night. You sleep like the living dead, you know. Not a peep. And so neat under the covers. I’m sorry I’m a slob. I know you hate when I pull the covers out and roll about and starfish on the bed. But you’re so cute when you’re sleeping, Em. Just your presence on the other side of the bed makes me feel loved. Safe. Protective. Happy. Makes it worth getting up in the morning._

_If you have to use this gun and something terrible happens, I just want you to remember that I love you._

_Yours,_

_Lena_

“Yes! This is it!”

Emily snapped out of her frozen reverie. Winston was scrolling one huge gorilla finger down the translucent screen of the tablet, the reflection of complex equations, diagrams and walls of text flashing on his glasses.

“Sorry?” She was lost in the voice of Lena from the letter. She found, without really knowing why, her hand on the cool metal of the pistol. It had always scared her. All guns had. But despite herself, she picked it up with its holster and pushed it onto her belt. It felt like Lena would want her to at least take it home. If she ever did have to use it.

“This. The slipstreams chronal disinhibition pathway. This is – this could mean – ”

“I don’t understand.”

Winston turned to her. “For some months, Lena has been working for Overwatch. We recruited her from the Air Force with the intent of having her pilot the Slipstream, a prototype the Air Force developed in collaboration with us. But they were always secretive about some things. I always suspected they did not want to give British secrets to a multinational organisation like Overwatch. But this…”

He showed her the screen. “I’ve been getting strange reading at the lab from the hangar where the accident happened. It’s energy, but no kind I know. But if the Slipstream operates the way I think it does… Emily, I think Lena is lost in time.”

Emily should perhaps have asked how on earth this was possible. She was a doctor, but a newly graduated one. She had a fairly good grasp of science, but the kinds of things on that tablet screen went right over her head. Instead, though, there was one word she zeroed in on. One word.

“Lost?”

“I think so. I think the slipstream malfunction must have been that the energies shifted into the wrong plane – instead of space, they were polarised the opposite way to warp time. And I think that Lena’s body, her atoms, they exist, still, slightly out of time, just a millisecond away from being real. I think she’s alive, Emily.”

It was like molten gold being poured down her throat into her chest. Like feeling warm after a hundred years of cold. Like a fire long-extinguished flickering to life on the single, tenuous wick of a candle.

“You’re serious?”

“As global warming.”

“This is – so how – how do we – how do we save her?”

The gorilla heaved a great sigh. “I want to be honest with you, Emily. I have no idea. But I want to try. Lena became a dear friend to me during the months we worked together. She deserves us to try, at the very least.”

And so the waiting game began. Emily must have half-destroyed Winston’s phone with calls. Asking how he was doing working on it. Asking about the readings. Badgering him to get her access to the Overwatch hangar. She read several impolitely thick and incredibly boring textbooks on Quantum Physics in an attempt to gain some understanding of what was happening. Trying to see if there was anything, anything she could do to get Lena back.

It was a hot and fuggy summer in London before Winston made a breakthrough. Emily checked her phone during a busy shift at the hospital to find only two words in a text.

_She’s here_

And without a thought, she fled, leaving the work to somebody else for a few hours. Patients would still be coming in whatever she did.

By now she knew where the Overwatch hangar was, in a private airfield outside London. She was there within the hour, panting and clutching her Oyster Card in trembling fingers. She practically cracked the comms console at the security checkpoint asking to come in.

It opened.

But Emily was too late. Lena was gone. Or, whatever presence Lena still had was gone. Winston showed her the recordings and the data. Perhaps there had been something there. A blue blur. A few wayward pixels on the CCTV camera. A surge in the readings. But not a human. Not her girlfriend. Not Lena.

Not yet.

“I’m so sorry.”

There was no amount of sorry Winston could be that would console her. She ran away, deep into the complex, to a place she’d only ever seen over holovid chat. The barracks. Still used, still maintained. A few cadets and Overwatch agents eyed her as she passed, but they must have been warned, because they didn’t disturb her.

A hand touched her shoulder.

“Emily?”

A young woman with messy blonde hair up in a ponytail stood behind her, a stethoscope around her neck. She looked no older than a teenager.

“Miss…?”

“Doctor. Ziegler. Angela, if you please.”

“Doctor?” Emily looked the girl up and down. “You skipped a few years.”

“I did.” She smiled. “I understand you’re Lena’s partner.”

“Yes. Um, Doctor, too. Emily McAvery. Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleasure. I thought you might be lost. Might want to see Lena’s locker.”

“I… yes please.”

The young doctor showed Emily through the warren-like barracks to a small double room. It looked, unlike the rest of the place, untouched. Emily saw with a heavy heart that the sheets on the left hand bed had been pulled out from where they were tucked into the mattress.

“I’ll give you some time. Just call me on the comms panel if you need me.” Angela said, gesturing to the locker against the left hand wall. “And if it’s worth anything, we miss Lena very much. She was only here a few months, but she made an impression.”

“Thank you.” Emily said, nodding. Angela left her as promised to look through the locker.

Inside she found a pad of familiar writing paper. She took it out and ran her fingertips fondly over the poor quality paper and the ringbound spine. She could see the impression of Lena’s pen from pages before. She always did press too hard. Then, she noticed that several pages in the front were filled up but not torn out. A few were notes, taken in briefings or lectures, but several were draughts for letters. One was finished, but never sent.

 

_Dear Em,_

_I’ll get this bloody letter right at some point. I keep tripping over my words. I don’t really know how to say this and I’ll probably never send this letter. Gah. Oh dear. I just literally wrote the word ‘gah’ as if I’m speaking. I’m such a knob when it comes to you. Can’t get my head on straight. I’ll probably have to re-write this letter now._

_I’ve been lying to you. And I feel awful. I’ve been wanting to tell you but they’ve made me keep it under wraps. I’m working for Overwatch now, on this Slipstream yet. It’s ground-breaking stuff. The most exciting career opportunity ever. And I’ve told you a bit about it, but that I’m still with the Air Force. I know it’s wrong. But I’m worried you’ll leave me. It’s one thing having a girlfriend who’s gone all the time, in service to her country, with an actual branch of the military. But I know how some people view Overwatch. As this dangerous organisation of vigilantes that operate outside of the law. I see how proud you are of me when I’m in uniform. When I talk about the things I’ve done with the Air Force. I don’t know if you’d look at me the same now._

_The Air Force was suffocating me. All of the rules and regulations. All of the waiting and the debating and the fussing over every order. In the end we’re just doing what the government says too. I feel more and more like we’re sent where the money and good publicity is, not where people need actual help. I feel I could help the world more in Overwatch. But I’m terrified of disappointing you, Em. I want you to be proud of me. To support me. But you know, me being the daft thing I am, I’ve kept this quiet and now I’m too far in._

_I won’t send this. I can’t. But I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you after the Slipstream launch, after I’m back safely. If I can fly a teleporting jet, I’m sure I can tell my girlfriend the truth._

_However angry you are at me, please, please remember that I love you._

_Yours,_

_Lena_

“You idiot.” Emily whispered to the pad of paper (as though it could reply). “Of course I’m proud of you. Of course I love you. All I want is for you to be happy, Lena. That’s all I ever want.”

And there it was. More a feeling than a sound. The brush of a consciousness on hers. A memory within a memory. The vague sense of familiarity when you see a face you can’t place but know you’ve seen before.

“Lena?”

There it was again. And then a flicker in the air. A flash of blue. Something like a hand reaching out. A scream, or an echo of an echo of a scream.

“Lena!”

_E-E-E-E-E-Em-Em-Em-_

Emily scrambled to slap the comms pad. “Winston!” She yelled as it connected to his lab. “Winston, she’s here!”

The gorilla tried to get up so fast that he toppled arse over elbow to the floor in his spinny desk chair.

“Hold on, baby!” Emily grabbed at the intangible nothingness of her love. “Hang on, I’m here, I’m here!”

There was the crashing sound that only a gorilla sprinting down a narrow corridor could make and Winston came barrelling into the room, panting and sweating. He saw the flicker of blue, saw the impression of a face, a voice, a person. A woman. Lena.

She flickered away and silence fell.

“You saw her.” Emily breathed, winded as though it was she who had run across the compound. “She was here, Winston. She said my name. She’s alive.”

“I know. I know. She’s alive. Lena is alive.” He adjusted his skewed glasses and began to furiously paw at his tablet. “We need some way to – to anchor her here. In the present. Make her solid. Align her atoms correctly again. I need to think of a way. I need time.”

She gave him time.

He took it, sweet-ass.

Lena was there. She was alive. Emily held onto that single thought for months. Summer became autumn and autumn turned to winter. Christmas passed, and it was the first time that Emily had been truly melancholy in months. She had always loved Christmas with Lena, who adored the holiday season. She went whole hog with it. Dressed up, presents for everybody, eggnog and a fully trimmed tree and carols and crackers. Everything felt fake and gloomy without Lena in a Santa hat singing an off-key rendition of ‘Come Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’.

Winston eventually made progress. He set up a sort of faraday cage-style chamber in the hangar that he said would held to concentrate temporal energy and magnify it, so that when Lena did appear, she would be more corporeal. And she did appear occasionally, sometimes for a brief second, sometimes for a whole minute. Always screaming. Always writhing as though trapped in some awful never-ending fall. It was awful. Every time, Emily forced herself to watch the footage. Every time she cried. And every time she opened her box of letters and read every single word of every single one.

And then there was a time unlike all the others.

She spent time at the hangar by now. Any day off was passed in Winston’s lab, sitting and doing work on her laptop while the gorilla went through streams of calculations and tinkered with devices. Secretly, she hoped that Lena would appear and she’d be there so that she could spend every second possible in her presence.

“Whoa there. What on earth –”

Emily snapped out of the intense and brain-destroying powerpoint on fiscal responsibility for doctors that she was wading through and making notes on and looked at Winston. The monitors were going crazy, levels peaking and troughing, lines wiggling all over the place. The hangar’s new modifications roared into life with a hum like a hundred generators and a blinding flash of blue burned their eyes.

“She’s here!” Winston bellowed, flinging himself up from his chair again, but Emily was faster, sprinting downstairs with her pen and notes still in hand. The air in the hangar crackled and burned and made the hairs on her arms stand up on end.

“Emily! No! Don’t go closer – the readings are off the chart! You’ll burn up in there! There’s too much energy!”

She would have. She would have jumped into the wild blue light and taken whatever fate awaited her inside. Perhaps there was just an infinitesimally small chance that she would find herself with Lena, wherever Lena was. They might be lost in time and never found, but at least they would be together.

But Winston’s huge and hairy arms closed around her, pulling her back.

“No!” She screamed, but he was a four hundred pound gorilla and she a tiny woman, so really he’d had the upper hand all along. She wriggled and strained, but to no effect. The only thing she could think to do was to thrown her pen and notepad into the time storm, watching as the light danced and flashed. Then it was gone and everything had disappeared.

“Next time,” she gasped as Winston let her go, “Don’t you dare stop me.”

She spent several sour days at home before finally swallowing her pride and returning to the hangar. When she did, she found something amazing.

It was a letter.

Singed at the edges, tingling to the touch, outlined in a strange blue light. Touching it made Emily feel as though she was falling, though in what direction she could not quite tell. Winston watched her anxiously, fiddling with his glasses, perhaps frightened she might try to fling herself into the hangar below – or perhaps fling herself at him instead. Big as he was, a pissed-off Scotswoman can kill a man with nothing but her bare hands.

 

_EEmMmM_

_Here I’m here I’m Here I’m I’m here here_

_You_

_You_

_Love_

_I_

_ReM_

_eMbe_

_r_

_Lena_

Emily kept that letter in her pocket for months.

The next came soon after, and perhaps the time-ghost of Lena was getting better at writing or Winston’s chronal cage was working, but it was slightly more legible.

 

_Em_

_Lost I_

_SomeTim esI see you?_

_I’mherebut WherE am I?_

_RemembeR me?_

_Help?_

_Lo_

_V_

_Eyou_

_Lena_

“It’s working, Winston.” She said about a hundred times, as if this would make ‘it’ work more. “The cage. I think it’s keeping her here longer every time. I think she’s coming back.”

He nodded and reached one oddly flexible foot over to his workbench to grab a screwdriver in his toes. “The cage is primitive. It overloads, see? That’s why we get the time storms. It concentrates the chronal energy too much, amplifies it into the chaos we keep seeing on the meters. What I need to make is a smaller anchor, one that will keep the atoms aligned just right, so she’ll be here but not exploding.”

“I’m glad you considered the ‘not exploding’ part.” Emily said drily.

“I am to please.” He smiled. Emily wondered how anybody could smile with Lena gone. Lena had been her smile. She’d goofed around and mucked about and told jokes and got herself involved in all these shenanigans. Fondness seeped into Emily’s bones at the warm, gold-tinted memories. It felt good. Warm. Strong.

She wrote back to tell Lena everything was going to be okay. That Winston was creating a device that would bring her back. That she was safe. That she loved her more than anything in the entire world. That the entire world didn’t matter if Lena could once again be in her arms. Then she threw the letter into the next time storm in the hangar.

Lena was quick to reply.

 

_Em_

_Can’t sAY enou_

_Gh thank you. Save me you. Winston too._

_Love you much SO. gLAd you remembered me._

_Also runninGOUT of paper?_

_Lena_

Emily laughed. Loud and rich and true for the first time in forever. Trust Lena. The next time storm, she threw a fresh pad of paper and a pencil in. And then a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, just in case it was possible for Lena to eat.

She received a letter and an empty wrapper.

 

_Em_

_GlaD it’s not fruit & nUT you know I HATE fruit & nut why do you always buy fruit & nut_

_Progress?_

_I just ne_

_Ed you to -I REMEMBER – love you_

_Lena_

Winston’s progress on the chronal anchor was slow. So slow. Emily could have thrown his stupid prototypes out of the window seven hundred million times over already if she hadn’t’ve had enough common sense to realise that this had to be perfect. If the anchor malfunctioned, it might kill Lena, or worse, send her further into the strange ether of time. No, Emily waited. Not patiently, but she waited. Lena sent letters, when she could. It seemed that time only aligned so briefly that it was hard for her to have a hand to write, let alone to push through to the present in order to send it. But she wrote. Letters that became longer and made more sense. Every single time, she said the same thing. Remember I love you. Even from the torment of being lost in time, Lena wanted to reassure her. To make her feel better. To tell her she was loved. It was an overwhelming feeling.

Emily loved this woman. She loved Lena Oxton as much as the woman lost in time loved her. Loved her absolutely. Completely. Intensely.

So she had an idea.

It had to be Christmas. That was the right time for it. Emily waited. She planned. And she fretted and double-checked and changed her mind a hundred times. But she had to do it. She knew it was right.

“Are you sure you want to hang out in that musty place on Christmas?” Her sister asked curiously on Christmas eve.

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s always the party here if you get bored. And don’t forget to call mum and dad! They may be on holiday but they still expect a call!”

“Yeh, yeh. I know.”

Winston tried to dissuade her too. “There’s no guarantee she’ll even appear today, Emily. Why don’t you come to the Christmas dinner? It’s quite good here, you know. They use in-date turkey ration packs and everything.”

She politely declined.

Emily sat in the lab staring at the monitors, playing with the letter in her hand. She had a feeling. Well, she had a certainty. She knew the time was right. Knew that Lena would be here.

It was late in the afternoon and her fingernails were bitten to the quick before one monitor even beeped. Then it was all happening again – the whirr and buzz of the chronal cage, the bright light, the hellish sound of screaming echoing around the hangar. Emily ran out to face the storm, her heart set, her feet sure.

And she threw the letter and the ring into the blazing heart of time.

The air went still. The storm vanished. Lena’s voice lingered for a few seconds before disappearing. And then nothing. Nothing for hours and hours. Emily didn’t even go back to the lab. She sat on the hard metal floor and wept and wrung her hands and messed her hair up in agony. Night fell and the party in the mess hall kicked into full swing. Nobody bothered the lonely girl in the hangar. Everybody knew that Emily was there, and somebody (usually Angela) checked in on her every so often. But none of them disturbed her. They knew she was holding a vigil. Waiting for an answer.

Emily had fallen asleep, deep into the night, leaning against a forklift truck’s huge wheel. She’d promised herself that she’d stay. Just in case. Just in case.

A soft blue light spread from nowhere in particular, casting long shadows across the room. Low crackles emitted from a spitting centre, sort of human, like a figure sculpted by a small child who doesn’t quite know what a person is made of. A shadow, an echo, a being of light and time.

No machinery whirred into life. There was no storm. Only a woman, stuttering in and out of being like an image interfered with by television static.

Emily woke with a start at the light. She squinted, scrambling to her feet, lurching towards the light.

It was Lena.

Lena Oxton, the same as the day she had climbed into that jet. Flight suit on. Hair awry from that awful helmet. Wide-eyed and smiling.

“Yes.” She said, a voice heard as though through an old-fashioned radio.

“Lena?” Emily breathed, not daring to believe it.

“Yes.” Lena said, dropping a quivering blue envelope to the floor and cradling in her hands the ring that had been inside of it. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“You – you’re here.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

Lena cocked her head to the side, a movement that caused the whole room to ripple strangely. “Depends on how drunk Winston got at the Christmas party and how far along the anchor you wrote about is.”

“So…”

“Turns out I just needed a different type of anchor.” Lena smiled. Emily gestured to the ring, but Lena shook her head.

“It’s you.” She said, eyes full of love even through the void of time and space. “It’s you. You’re my anchor. You never forgot me. You never stopped loving me and I never stopped loving you. It’s so hard to hold onto myself here, Em. It’s nothingness. Everythingness. Time. I’ve been so close to letting go. Being lost. But it always comes back to you. Remembering that I love you.”

“I- I love you too, Lena. So much. So, so much, I – I – I can’t believe…”

Emily trailed off, losing her breath and her voice, afraid that breathing would somehow make time go on and Lena fade.

“Now go get the big guy. I’ve been here too long. Apparently, I’ve got a wedding to plan.”


End file.
